Desire and the political unconscious in American literature
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Desire and the political unconscious in American literature
Macmillan, 1990
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Note
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The book argues that in the encounter between desire and ideology we find American literature to be a narrative of a decentered ego in the context of a culture that subverts structure and stability in order to promote change and renewal. Consensus and dissensus commingle in a process of disintegration and reconstruction. The book applies modern theories of literature and psychoanalysis to a broad range of American literary works and extends to the unconscious recent theoretical discussions of the relationship between literature and ideology. The book attempts a reconstruction, not only of American literature and culture, but of Freud as well.
Table of Contents
- Part 1 America and the semantics of desire: "The Blindness of the Seeing Eye" - literature, ideology and the unconscious
- the American paradise - Freud, ideology and narcissism. Part 2 Oedipus: the law of the fathers - Hawthorne
- family crisis - "The Love Past All Understanding". Part 3 Narcissus: the new narcissism - sexual politics in William Dean Howells
- freedom and desire - Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin. Part 4 Thanatos: conscience and civilization - death and alienation in Mark Twain
- love goddess.
by "Nielsen BookData"